@andy_doodle asked me some excellent questions on Friday and today tweeted me saying -
@Pamela_McLean great to meet you at the Hub. Let me know if those questions helped and we can help you develop it further :) #mixatsix #hub
I think it would be hard to reply in 140 characters so I'm cheating and writing a blog instead.
The classic questions
Andy's questions were the classic ones - "Who?" (Who do you want to share you ideas with?) "What and why?" (What ideas do you want to share and why?) and then (given the answers to the previous questions) "How?" (How are you going to do it?).
Importance of multi-media
The questions were more compelling because Andy drew me a diagram. Visuals are important. I have the diagram in front of me. It's an mage I should really capture and share - but I'm not sure how to do that without finding some instructions - I'm ashamed of the many gaps in my multii-media skill set.
Ideas about our rapidly changing world
Andy knows some of the ideas that I care about, because we were talking about them, and I shared a rough diagram too. The ideas are to do with living in our raidly changining world - and how it looks to me. Of course I can't explain the ideas easily here, because I haven't got them presented in a good form for sharing yet - which is why Andy was asking me the basic Who? What? Why? How? questions.
Key ideas
He asked what ideas I want to share. They are the main things that affect how I see the world at present. When I think of some of the key ideas this is how I "title" them for myself (in no particular order).
- Time triangles
- Dry-land and deep water
- Embers, ashes and flames
- Time travellers all
- Landscape of chage
- Let's not go it alone
- Exploring the landscape - mapping it out together
- The Invisible Revolution - an article I wrote in 2011 for inclusion in a book - To read it online or order a copy see http://pediapress.com/books/show/07ebb0bdddb0412af5bfc25bc35d2a/
- Valuable work - and some mismatches between financial value and valuable
- Learning journeys - curiousity and doing
- The life long dance between theory and practice
- Virtual academia and established academia - what the Internet really offers us for learning in new ways
- Slippery words - and the temporariness of meaning
- Cross-cultural collaboration - uncertainlty, confusion, and assumptions
- The sane-crazies
- Anecdotes, lessons, and pattern language
- Consumerism, "individualism", competition and isolation
- Trust, creativity and collaboration (aspects of post-consumerism).
- References and context - P2P, e-gaia, impossible hampster, global warming, post-carbon futures, transition. world-of-work, student-debt, patterns of inequality, etc.etc.
Why share them?
I want to share the ideas initially to find out which ideas have any value to others, and then I'll have some idea if they are worth capturing to share more widely. I also want to explore the ideas again partly for my own benefit, because it's only by trying to share ideas that I get new insights. That's why I appreciated the chance of sharing them on Friday. I'm not an academic or a writer - so I don't have any idea of "a particular audience" (such as "my students") ready to hear anything I might think of saying.
If the ideas are useful then I'd like to share them with whoever might find them of use. Obviously if I could do that in a way that incresased, rathern then depleted, my resources that would be useful to me - but financial reward is not "the reason" for wanting to share the ideas. I've thought deeply about some of these things, and most of my thoughrs are based on pracitcal experiences. It's a shame to waste them if they are useful. If, by sharing my thoughts, I can save other people some "thinking and angst time", or help people facing steep learning curves to find those curves less steep, then I'd like to do that.
How to share them
That rather depends on answers to some of the other questions. It takes time, skills, and all kinds of resources to share information and ideas effectively - which is why mine are still just kicking around in my head, scattered around with a few other people like Andy through word of mouth, and on a few diagrams and flip charts.
I'd appreaciate it if we could continue the conversation.
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